Former prime minister and PTI Chairman Imran Khan on Sunday accused former army chief General (retd) Qamar Javed Bajwa of giving “NRO-2” to the cabal of thieves and imposing them on the nation and country.
“Gen (r) Musharraf granted the first and now the second one was given by the one who was in power,” he said while addressing a press conference in Lahore.
He regretted on the one hand, one by one all thieves were getting relief in corruption cases and getting themselves exonerated from corruption charges while on the other hand, a 70 years old Senator is being victimized for a tweet against army chief. “You will never find such an example of injustice in the world.”
Speaking about the return of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s son Suleman Shehbaz, Imran Khan said: “one by one all thieves will get relief in corruption cases and get themselves exonerated from corruption charges”. “After Ishaq Dar, now he [Suleman Shehbaz] will be dry-cleaned.”
Imran condemned the treatment being meted out to Azam Swati over his controversial tweets against the state institutions and military officials.
“He [Swati] was arrested just for saying General Bajwa gave NRO to thieves… the entire Pakistan knows that he [Gen Bajwa] gave NRO-2,” he remarked.
The PTI chief said in civilised societies a sitting senator cannot be “tortured or stripped naked” just for sharing his opinion. “You can deny his [Swati’s] claim,” he added.
Default risk, media oblivion
The PTI chairman assailed the PDM government for bringing the country to the cusp of default, and accused the media of turning a blind eye towards economic matters and instead focusing on the Toshakhana wrist watch, which he said was rightfully his to “sell or do whatever I want to with it”.
He made these remarks at a press conference in Lahore where he began by comparing his government’s performance with that of the incumbent PDM setup, whom he blamed for the looming threat of default.
“The reason of my media talk today is to make the people aware of the direction that our country is heading in,” he said. “If we don’t raise our voice then Pakistan will experience something it has never before and we are going to default. All the funding from abroad will be stopped.
“A default would mean the country’s income in dollars has stopped, and then the rupee will devalue further. The cabal of crooks imposed on us don’t care about any of this. They have been stealing money for the last 30 years. They have stashed huge amounts of money abroad.”
Imran said that the ruling elite does not “care if the country defaults because their money is stashed abroad in the form of dollars”. “But the circumstance of a default is worrying for the common man,” he added.
“A default will be a very big loss for Pakistan. No investment will come back into Pakistan. No overseas Pakistani will be willing to invest in Pakistan.” He recalled that dollar rate was Rs178 when he was ousted as the prime minister. “Today we cant even purchase dollar for Rs250.”
The PTI chief claimed that when he came into power in 2018, he had inherited a fragile economy but had turned it around, only to see his work undone by the present setup.
